The Passage of Tim
by tattersmith
Summary: Bella is accidentally changed in such a way that she has no further obligations to the Cullens.


The Passage of Tim

The Pacific Northwest was a popular hunting ground for nomadic vampires, frequent cloud cover and vast forests made it simpler to traverse the terrain, and for those so inclined, hikers made a particularly wholesome snack. So it was that Bella, stumbling and sobbing through the undergrowth, lost in the agony of first heartbreak (compounded by teenage angst) and dampened by both her tears and the rain, encountered Tim.

"Well, well, well, pretty lady. Why are you wandering so lost and alone?"

In no condition to reply Bella just hiccuped and sobbed. Tim grimaced at her weepy eyes and dripping nose, they weren't attractive and she wasn't even skinny fit like a true hiker, more skinny fat like the hipsters he'd eaten outside of Seattle.

"Maiden you're no beauty, but you'll do me tonight." Tim said and went for her jugular. Bella said nothing but the agony of his bite trumped the agony of her heartbreak and in an instant the reality of her predicament sobered her. So this was death, over a boy, a vampire, an asshole who didn't even love her. The fury consumed her and Tim winced at the sudden surge of adrenaline and then he stumbled as from nowhere a werewolf landed on his back. Bella was dropped and she stepped forward into nothing finding herself slipping and tumbling down a muddy ravine and into the waterway below. She could swim, but the pain in her neck was overwhelming and after a few sputtering breaths snatched at the surface she sunk under water and was pulled away by the current. She blacked out and for some time knew nothing.

If Bella had any control over the situation, she would have remained oblivious to the changes occurring to her body but instead the pain was so terrible that her awareness was focused entirely on the agony. There was nothing more than the pain, no conscious thought as she writhed and shrieked. After an eternity the pain receded and Bella remained motionless, she had the feeling that any movement would unleash the fire again. For a long time she stayed still and silent concentrating only on the absence of pain and the feel of the rocks under her side. Her body felt heavy and her mind felt cleansed and opened, like the world was new and she was ready to know it all and do everything. Eventually she twitched a finger. This unleashed no devastating torrent of agony, so she cautiously sat up. It was then that she realised she could see nothing. At all. She brought her fingers to her eyelids. Her eyes were open. She felt the rest of her face, then her arms and body. She was wet but uninjured and mostly unclothed. It was very very quiet but she could hear the sound of water moving and very softly the sound of creatures swimming through it. The thought of creepy crawlies sent her into a panic and she flailed her arms away from the wet and into the crumbling dusty walls of what she was rapidly discovering was a very small prison. She could hear the dust falling into the water, she could hear the creatures moving away and still she dug her hands deep into the soft loamy walls pulling them down in on top of her, anything to get out, to get away, and in terror she made a tiny whimper of sound. Suddenly she realised that she wasn't breathing and the confusion of that thought so startled her that she froze, still as a marble statue, and finally she started thinking.

It took Bella a long time to make her way out of the subterranean caverns. She had to rationalise that digging her way out was less than subtle without knowing what lay above or how deep she was. She had a momentary chuckle that her digging might be the catalyst that finally fractured the San Andreas fault. Then she had to learn ... the breathing she'd resumed as soon as she realised she wasn't and finally she had to convince herself to get back in the water to navigate the underground rivers. Although she was sure she'd been quite clever about following the current backwards and trying to orient herself with gravity, she had repeatedly stumbled and been swept down complicated networks of tunnels until she was quite certain that she was travelling in circles through the maze of twisty little passages, all alike, in the dark, not breathing (because she was dead) and just when she was certain that she would spend an eternity slowly being eroded by water as she blindly pulled herself along stone walls, the water abruptly tasted of salt and she found herself dumped in the sea.

She swam and she grieved. For Charlie and her mom and Phil. For Billy and Jake. And for the Cullens. Then she'd forced the water from her lungs and stomach and nasal cavities and she'd learned to hunt seals and dolphins and sea birds as they rode the waves and now entirely nude and unselfconscious she swam through the Pacific. Occasionally she would feel a ping of sonar against her skin and she would swim away from the source. Sometimes she would approach boats to smell the blood of her natural prey and to listen to the conversations, but she didn't kill the sailors. Time passed as she learned her body and she knew that the world had been opened to her in a way that she couldn't bring herself to regret.


End file.
